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Controllers were among my favorite archetypes to play in CoH and I've been interested in learning as much as I could about your goals to make control effects work in a "non-binary" fashion. I've always thought that using a non-binary paradigm for control powers would make control effects in general operate more "naturally" and be less prone to perma-hold situations. I'm hoping you manage to pull this off along with the rest of the game of course.

" a number of other archetypes with controls as their secondary power set."

So, with the released classes, I know Operator is the one with control as primary, but the other archetypes that have manipulation (control/support as secondary) as secondary wont be out initially. Are we expecting to see a good set of these other controls scattered throughout the classes, and how will those differentiate from manipulation once its out?

" a number of other archetypes with controls as their secondary power set."

So, with the released classes, I know Operator is the one with control as primary, but the other archetypes that have manipulation (control/support as secondary) as secondary wont be out initially. Are we expecting to see a good set of these other controls scattered throughout the classes, and how will those differentiate from manipulation once its out?

The statement was in reference to the Manipulation Sets.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

I like this. Neverwinter Online has a class called the “Control Wizard” that presumably is focused on controlling enemies. But since that’s a binary situation in that game, as it is in most MMOs, controlling enemies risks making content trivial. So they’ve watered it down so that you “control” enemies for a few seconds at a time with pretty large cooldowns. Basically the “control” aspect is barely given a token representation and the class is just about ranged DPS.

I look forward to a game where a controller can actually control enemies!

I like the general idea of losing access to the higher tier powers first when been subjected to control effects. That makes sense because those highest tier powers are likely the hardest ones for a user to use even in ideal, unmolested situations. I liken it to a Magic-User in D&D: Even for a high level MU it's not an easy thing to cast a 9th level spell whereas it should remain possible for that same high level MU to cast a 1st level spell even if they are under strong duress (like being controlled to a certain degree).

This "willpower" concept seems like an evolution of the later version of the CoH Blaster's Defiance Inherent Power. Basically that power allowed Blasters to continue to use their 1st and 2nd tier powers even if they were otherwise completely affected by control powers.

This sounds like a great change from COH. I only played a couple of controllers often just because to me they felt very static and generally weak compared to all the other classes. This sound much more dynamic. I may actually enjoy trying out the role much more than before! This was a great informational update!

—

"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle

I like the general idea of losing access to the higher tier powers first when been subjected to control effects. That makes sense because those highest tier powers are likely the hardest ones for a user to use even in ideal, unmolested situations. I liken it to a Magic-User in D&D: Even for a high level MU it's not an easy thing to cast a 9th level spell whereas it should remain possible for that same high level MU to cast a 1st level spell even if they are under strong duress (like being controlled to a certain degree).

This basic idea seems like an evolution of the latest version of the CoH Blaster's Defiance Inherent Power. Basically that power allowed Blasters to continue to use their 1st and 2nd tier powers even if they were otherwise completely affected by control powers.

I will say loosing partial powers in reference to sleep seems a bit odd to me, but I guess cinematically I think of it as the few seconds Juggernaut (or whoever) is stumbling around, ineffectively hitting things, before passing out.

I like the loss of partial powers as it makes more sense to me than losing everything altogether. It always seemed weird to go from full gamut of attacks to then not be able to make any attacks. This seems a better balance.

—

"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle

One of the things I loved most in CoH was playing controllers, and having the ability to absolutely lock something down. The binary there was ameliorated by the fact that there were almost always enough mobs that a 'troller had to pick and choose their targets, and balance that lockdown against other threats. But I probably first fell in love with the game by playing a Stone Controller -- Seeing a Lt. or Boss encased in a huge rock was just so rewarding.

I'm concerned that Control will feel "mushy" with this design, to the extent that all holds will start to feel like "slows" or "weakens", without a true sense of "hold". I understand the rationale behind the changes, but as a completely non-pvp player, I don't personally care if binary holds are a frustrating thing for whoever is on the receiving end -- they're all just going to be little 1s and 0s anyway. It disappoints me when PVP concerns cause a PVE element that I really liked to be watered down.

Again, I get the rationale behind the choice. It's not going to be CoH 2, I know that. Withholding final judgement until I have a chance to see how it feels in action.

This sounds like a great change from COH. I only played a couple of controllers often just because to me they felt very static and generally weak compared to all the other classes. This sound much more dynamic. I may actually enjoy trying out the role much more than before! This was a great informational update!

Super M. wrote:

I agree -- I just hated how long it took in levels before it felt like they "came online". These seem like good changes.

Controllers worked on a different "effectiveness scale" than most other archetypes. At lower levels they were among the weaker classes in the game and were generally weaker than most other low level versions of other classes. But by the time you got them beyond level 32 (and their ninth tier powers) they generally skyrocketed in capability.

Again think of the analogy of the D&D Magic User: A low level MU is typically far less capable than a low level Fighter. But once they get high enough to sling fireballs around they became very useful/fun. ;)

I'm loving the way you are approaching controls. It sounds like it fits the very sort of philosophy many people have been asking for: taking what we loved in the old game and improving it.

This, of course, is my favourite bit: 'unlike other MMOs in which controls have a very short duration or can be dispelled with damage, in City of Titans controls are more persistent and have a more noteworthy duration'

I like the loss of powers by tiers. Reminds me a bit of the Blaster's Defiance ability after it was upgraded to allow use of low-tier powers even when Held. Again, taking something from the old game but improving it.

Finally, it's a pleasure to see in this update and the previous one on Masteries the quality of writing Tannim is capable of when his phone isn't autocorrecting everything. ;-)

Thank you for this! Thank you for this for several reasons. Firstly, boss fights in other MMO's make controllers entirely useless, as does most group content. Either all bosses are immune all together, or many team members are too pew pew and instantly break any effects. Always frustrating. In Champions Online, I had built myself a nifty little Mental controller, Psy-Ryn, and she was able to keep enemies (and some players) sleeping or passive for a full minute. Needless to say, they nerfed controller powers into oblivion later on... And DCUO, controllers were such a joke, they just became power batteries for OTHER players. I STILL don't even know if there is any validity to that class there.

Mostly, i really like that Knock Defense is actually tied into Physical defense. Nothing is worse than having a Hulk or Juggernaut style character, who is nigh-invulnerable but still getting tossed around like a bit.... ragdoll.... like a ragdoll. I really look forward to bringing Psy-Ryn into City of Titans, along with all of my other characters. This was a great update to read, thank you.

One of the things I loved most in CoH was playing controllers, and having the ability to absolutely lock something down. The binary there was ameliorated by the fact that there were almost always enough mobs that a 'troller had to pick and choose their targets, and balance that lockdown against other threats. But I probably first fell in love with the game by playing a Stone Controller -- Seeing a Lt. or Boss encased in a huge rock was just so rewarding.

I'm concerned that Control will feel "mushy" with this design, to the extent that all holds will start to feel like "slows" or "weakens", without a true sense of "hold". I understand the rationale behind the changes, but as a completely non-pvp player, I don't personally care if binary holds are a frustrating thing for whoever is on the receiving end -- they're all just going to be little 1s and 0s anyway. It disappoints me when PVP concerns cause a PVE element that I really liked to be watered down.

Again, I get the rationale behind the choice. It's not going to be CoH 2, I know that. Withholding final judgement until I have a chance to see how it feels in action.

I suspect that in practice it's still going to be relatively easy for a competent, well-built Operator to completely "lock-down" bunches of NPCs in all the ways it's really going to matter. The game will likely get plenty of Beta Testing to make sure of that.

And actually this CoT system sounds like it's going to make Control powers more useful against big bosses too because even if you can't lock them down completely you'll still be able to disrupt their ability to smack you with their strongest powers. Seems like a win for us as players.

First, I worry that it’s building in “vulnerabilities”. That is, a character will have to avoid certain enemies because of power choices. For example, as I level up my superhero The Drowsy Dwarf if I avoid improving a particular control stat, I won’t be able to complete any missions against the villain Dr Narcolepdose and his Sleepmen minions. Is this a design goal?

I also wonder how the mob AI will handle non-binary controls. How often will it use or avoid using powers impacted by controls?

This would be a great way to handle toggle defensive powers as well. Early-on in CoH (they eventually changed it, but it was the case for awhile), if you got held/stunned ALL of your toggles dropped. This meant that, as an invulnerability Tank, I had to be super careful about putting up Unyielding Stance (it used to root you) as soon as I got into a pack. If I got stunned, passives were so weak that I'd easily be killed. Once I could run around with Unyielding Stance, I never worried about control powers again. That binary nature was either un-fun (because my primary powers were rendered useless by a single stun/hold) or invisible (because once I could leave Unyielding Stance up full-time I never had to think about them again).

With this design, you could give something basic to a Tank class (Temp Invulnerability, for example) a high control resistance value because my Invulnerable Tank is always Invulnerable, even when he's asleep. However, you could set something more complicated (like Instant Healing for Regeneration Scrappers) to a low control resistance value. This would give controllers the ability to make a Tank more killable without making the Tank feel useless.

First, I worry that it’s building in “vulnerabilities”. That is, a character will have to avoid certain enemies because of power choices. For example, as I level up my superhero The Drowsy Dwarf if I avoid improving a particular control stat, I won’t be able to complete any missions against the villain Dr Narcolepdose and his Sleepmen minions. Is this a design goal?

Even in CoH certain types of Controllers had various "strengths and weaknesses" against certain types of MOBs. For instance Fire Controllers tended to be the best against large numbers of lesser critters whereas Gravity Controllers tended to be better facing fewer higher level boss-types foes.

No type of Operator should be masters at ALL situations. I have no problem with some scenarios being harder for some types of Operators than others.

Pleonast wrote:

I also wonder how the mob AI will handle non-binary controls. How often will it use or avoid using powers impacted by controls?

I'm sure the AI is generally geared to try to use its strongest powers against players as much as possible. As it loses access to the higher powers it'll be forced to use its weaker ones against PCs. Doesn't seem like there would be any fundamental problems with that kind of reaction to being partially controlled.

First, I worry that it’s building in “vulnerabilities”. That is, a character will have to avoid certain enemies because of power choices. For example, as I level up my superhero The Drowsy Dwarf if I avoid improving a particular control stat, I won’t be able to complete any missions against the villain Dr Narcolepdose and his Sleepmen minions. Is this a design goal?

I also wonder how the mob AI will handle non-binary controls. How often will it use or avoid using powers impacted by controls?

You never worry about improving the control stats as you can never see them. Inetead, you look to use protection powers: Defense to Controls by style (Melee, range, AoE) and / or Resiistwncento the Tupe of the Control (physical, energy, exotic).

If you have, say a character with low exotic resistance and an npc group uses exotic types controls; they will have greater effect on your character. It works the same way as handling sustain versus damage,

The basic AI uses powers as they are available. If a charmed npc has a charmed power become available, and there is a hostile target of the originator of the charm effect in range of the powers (or friendly target if it is a friendly power) the npc will use it. Same as with taunt:

Concentration controls simply won’t activate. Taunted powers will be used as they are avsilable.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

I'm curious how this will work with self defense powers on the melee (and gunner) ATs.

Does getting held or slept have an effect on regeneration? Doesn't make sense that it would. Wolverine heals and is unbreakable bones all the time for instance. Not, all the time, except when held, asleep, or dazed. That would seem to be more of a debuff area for instance with a -regen attachment.

I'm curious how this will work with self defense powers on the melee (and gunner) ATs.

Does getting held or slept have an effect on regeneration? Doesn't make sense that it would. Wolverine heals and is unbreakable bones all the time for instance. Not, all the time, except when held, asleep, or dazed. That would seem to be more of a debuff area for instance with a -regen attachment.

That said, the system is intriguing to see played out.

I believe that controls affect your ability to activate powers. If you have a toggle power active, I wonder if the mezz would switch off the toggle, or since it has already been activated, allow it to continue?

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

I'm curious how this will work with self defense powers on the melee (and gunner) ATs.

Does getting held or slept have an effect on regeneration? Doesn't make sense that it would. Wolverine heals and is unbreakable bones all the time for instance. Not, all the time, except when held, asleep, or dazed. That would seem to be more of a debuff area for instance with a -regen attachment.

That said, the system is intriguing to see played out.

I believe that controls affect your ability to activate powers. If you have a toggle power active, I wonder if the mezz would switch off the toggle, or since it has already been activated, allow it to continue?

I tend to think, based on what I've read, that control effects could shut off currently active toggle powers. Instead of shutting ALL of them off in a binary way like CoH these toggles would be affected based on their tier's "Willpower" rating.

So if control effects in CoT affect/deactivate highest tier powers first then it suddenly becomes that much more important which tiers which powers are assigned to. Critical defensive toggles would apparently tend to be "more resistant" to the negative effects of control powers the lower tiered they are.

I wonder if tanky types will have to pay more attention to controls than they did in CoH. As a tanker in CoH you could generally just "push through" all the controls coming at you except for the rare and usually short-lived moments when they were stacked high enough to kick in for a second. This sounds more like the effect will ramp up, which might make it more of a factor for those taking most of the hits and aggro.

I wonder if tanky types will have to pay more attention to controls than they did in CoH. As a tanker in CoH you could generally just "push through" all the controls coming at you except for the rare and usually short-lived moments when they were stacked high enough to kick in for a second. This sounds more like the effect will ramp up, which might make it more of a factor for those taking most of the hits and aggro.

Yes I think a Tank would have to be most worried about their highest tiered defensive toggles first in CoT. The more control effects get piled on them the lower the tier will get affected. So for example if a Tank gets a "tiny bit controlled" they might lose their top tier power. But if the Tank gets "mostly controlled" they are probably going to lose most of their powers (toggle or otherwise) except the very lowest tier ones.

And I think that would depend on the nature of the control. If your enemies are all weilding controls that hold, sleep or disorient, then you might be in trouble. On the other hand, if your enemies are striking at your volition, then it might not affect you much at all, since you can probably find a target to attack... ah, but when your volition is targeted your affected powers won't be grayed out... interesting... so you won't know what's affected until you try. This could be deviously fun and frustrating at the same time.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

And I think that would depend on the nature of the control. If your enemies are all weilding controls that hold, sleep or disorient, then you might be in trouble. On the other hand, if your enemies are striking at your volition, then it might not affect you much at all, since you can probably find a target to attack... ah, but when your volition is targeted your affected powers won't be grayed out... interesting... so you won't know what's affected until you try. This could be deviously fun and frustrating at the same time.

Yeah I think there's a lot of layers to consider here and it will be interesting to see how this "multi-dimensional rock, paper, scissors" will work out.

Interesting stuff. I'm not too sure about the top down approach to willpower. There are certain classes, enforcer, who will have their bread and butter powers early on (at least that's the way it was for scrappers) as those powers had higher DPS rates. So locking them out of their T9 powers would not be a major handicap. They'd just use more bread and more butter. (I now want to make a baker themed enforcer) Perhaps that is intentional. It means that OPs will have to identify their targets more carefully and use their most powerful controls on those most likely to need a total lockdown while others that would be more reliant on high tier powers.

I get why you might not want to show CEV and willpower, but that is something that you are going to have to reverse course on. It's counter to previous statements about number/math transparency. There is a 7/3 heptagram painted in dry erase on my floor and Newton help me I will summon God of Math Arcanaville. Even if I have to do some differential calculus and sacrifice a TI-89. I seriously suggest you reconsider. It's fine to hide that be default but you must give us the option to see those numbers.

I didn't mean for this post to be completely negative. I'm glad you are putting a lot of thought into this and how to uniquely compromise the iron bonds of COH controllers with more main stream control methodology.

I do miss looking at a group of 10+ even cons and thinking. "I got this" before gleefully running up and dropping Vines, Roots, Carrion creepers, and watching Trappy run in to whip a bunch of freaks while the radiation sapped their strength. And then the rest of the group would run in thinking I was nuts to aggro the entire group before they were "ready," only to find just about everything dead or dying.

@Grimfox, I didn't get the impression that they are hiding the numbers from the players so much as they were just not displaying and tracking them in your UI. I'm pretty sure that you would be able to see each power's willpower rating and control effect value in the power descriptions and you will be able to see your defensive control stats in your character page's details. (assuming there will be a character details page, but why wouldn't there be?)

And then there's the mod community who will probably figure out a way to display it all and make it look good.

—

I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.

Interesting stuff. I'm not too sure about the top down approach to willpower. There are certain classes, enforcer, who will have their bread and butter powers early on (at least that's the way it was for scrappers) as those powers had higher DPS rates. So locking them out of their T9 powers would not be a major handicap. They'd just use more bread and more butter. (I now want to make a baker themed enforcer) Perhaps that is intentional. It means that OPs will have to identify their targets more carefully and use their most powerful controls on those most likely to need a total lockdown while others that would be more reliant on high tier powers.

This basic mechanic worked well enough for late-era Blasters in CoH with their Defiance Inherent power.

Grimfox wrote:

I get why you might not want to show CEV and willpower, but that is something that you are going to have to reverse course on. It's counter to previous statements about number/math transparency. There is a 7/3 heptagram painted in dry erase on my floor and Newton help me I will summon God of Math Arcanaville. Even if I have to do some differential calculus and sacrifice a TI-89. I seriously suggest you reconsider. It's fine to hide that be default but you must give us the option to see those numbers.

I'd have no doubt the various math savants would figure this system out to extreme min/max precision regardless. I definitely do NOT want to see this "control variable minutia" on my main GUIs but if MWM wants to bother to have all that data flow onto some kind of "hidden by default" logging stream that's fine by me.

I'm curious how this will work with self defense powers on the melee (and gunner) ATs.

Does getting held or slept have an effect on regeneration? Doesn't make sense that it would. Wolverine heals and is unbreakable bones all the time for instance. Not, all the time, except when held, asleep, or dazed. That would seem to be more of a debuff area for instance with a -regen attachment.

That said, the system is intriguing to see played out.

I think of it like Wolverine getting hit by some power or device that inhibits mutant powers, temporarily removing his healing factor. Not going to sleep. Like Deadpool with the Icebox collar in his second film. But we’ll have to see it in action to see how it works.

One of the things I loved most in CoH was playing controllers, and having the ability to absolutely lock something down. The binary there was ameliorated by the fact that there were almost always enough mobs that a 'troller had to pick and choose their targets, and balance that lockdown against other threats. But I probably first fell in love with the game by playing a Stone Controller -- Seeing a Lt. or Boss encased in a huge rock was just so rewarding.

I'm concerned that Control will feel "mushy" with this design, to the extent that all holds will start to feel like "slows" or "weakens", without a true sense of "hold". I understand the rationale behind the changes, but as a completely non-pvp player, I don't personally care if binary holds are a frustrating thing for whoever is on the receiving end -- they're all just going to be little 1s and 0s anyway. It disappoints me when PVP concerns cause a PVE element that I really liked to be watered down.

Again, I get the rationale behind the choice. It's not going to be CoH 2, I know that. Withholding final judgement until I have a chance to see how it feels in action.

This is almost precisely my position on the matter. Still, lengthy "mushy" controls will be preferable to the joke crowd control available in most MMOs...

One of the things I loved most in CoH was playing controllers, and having the ability to absolutely lock something down. The binary there was ameliorated by the fact that there were almost always enough mobs that a 'troller had to pick and choose their targets, and balance that lockdown against other threats. But I probably first fell in love with the game by playing a Stone Controller -- Seeing a Lt. or Boss encased in a huge rock was just so rewarding.

I'm concerned that Control will feel "mushy" with this design, to the extent that all holds will start to feel like "slows" or "weakens", without a true sense of "hold". I understand the rationale behind the changes, but as a completely non-pvp player, I don't personally care if binary holds are a frustrating thing for whoever is on the receiving end -- they're all just going to be little 1s and 0s anyway. It disappoints me when PVP concerns cause a PVE element that I really liked to be watered down.

Again, I get the rationale behind the choice. It's not going to be CoH 2, I know that. Withholding final judgement until I have a chance to see how it feels in action.

This is almost precisely my position on the matter. Still, lengthy "mushy" controls will be preferable to the joke crowd control available in most MMOs...

I'm still not convinced this control system is automatically destined to feel "mushy" in most situations. Obviously playtesting the game will prove this out one way or the other.

As explained in the update, one of the main concerns is the UI and adding too much clutter.

The other reason is that being affected by control powers is supposed to have an affect on how the player plays.

If you know without a don’t that the npc has charmed 3 of your powers, players will simply choose to ignore those powers. Yes they are in effect, less effective because of the charm but it also takes away from the charmed behavior. Compared to being charmed and not knowing exactly which power may be affected and having to play it safe and use yournlower tier powers or going for those which could have greater impact.

It is not about hiding information, but how that information impacts game play.

There is also a matter of conveying the appropriate j formation on multiple powers. When you are looking at upwards of 25+ powers (basic and sets), which may be affected by multiple different control effects at varying degrees, seeing numbers or display meters may does an adequate job. A UI that isn’t immediately intuitive fails at its job.

This is why, when you need to know a Power is affected, we use the power tray to show you. Or when you are feared, a visual indicator shows you who fears you do you can back off.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

I'm curious how this will work with self defense powers on the melee (and gunner) ATs.

Does getting held or slept have an effect on regeneration? Doesn't make sense that it would. Wolverine heals and is unbreakable bones all the time for instance. Not, all the time, except when held, asleep, or dazed. That would seem to be more of a debuff area for instance with a -regen attachment.

That said, the system is intriguing to see played out.

I think of it like Wolverine getting hit by some power or device that inhibits mutant powers, temporarily removing his healing factor. Not going to sleep. Like Deadpool with the Icebox collar in his second film. But we’ll have to see it in action to see how it works.

I'm curious how this will work with self defense powers on the melee (and gunner) ATs.

Does getting held or slept have an effect on regeneration? Doesn't make sense that it would. Wolverine heals and is unbreakable bones all the time for instance. Not, all the time, except when held, asleep, or dazed. That would seem to be more of a debuff area for instance with a -regen attachment.

That said, the system is intriguing to see played out.

I think of it like Wolverine getting hit by some power or device that inhibits mutant powers, temporarily removing his healing factor. Not going to sleep. Like Deadpool with the Icebox collar in his second film. But we’ll have to see it in action to see how it works.

That goes back to it being a -heal debuff. Not a telekinetic hold.

In this case it is about functional game mechanics and balanced game play. Not about the “reasoning” for why professor x’s Power stops wolverine from healing.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

In the old game, defense powers were suppressed while under a control effect.

The difference was that the magnitude had to be exceeded for the control to do anything.

Yes, the non-binary nature of the system can affect your protection powers, protections reduce the control effect value as well. The result is that at base value, protection sets can mitigate multiple control attacks before being fully controlled. When improved, peotection sets are even more difficult to control.

Compared to the rest of the game environment, thisenwith protection sets will always fair better than those without .

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

First, I worry that it’s building in “vulnerabilities”. That is, a character will have to avoid certain enemies because of power choices. For example, as I level up my superhero The Drowsy Dwarf if I avoid improving a particular control stat, I won’t be able to complete any missions against the villain Dr Narcolepdose and his Sleepmen minions. Is this a design goal?

I also wonder how the mob AI will handle non-binary controls. How often will it use or avoid using powers impacted by controls?

You never worry about improving the control stats as you can never see them. Inetead, you look to use protection powers: Defense to Controls by style (Melee, range, AoE) and / or Resiistwncento the Tupe of the Control (physical, energy, exotic).

If you have, say a character with low exotic resistance and an npc group uses exotic types controls; they will have greater effect on your character. It works the same way as handling sustain versus damage,

The basic AI uses powers as they are available. If a charmed npc has a charmed power become available, and there is a hostile target of the originator of the charm effect in range of the powers (or friendly target if it is a friendly power) the npc will use it. Same as with taunt:

Concentration controls simply won’t activate. Taunted powers will be used as they are avsilable.

If a character can skip particular defensive powers in order to have other powers, do we have in effect a “weakness” system? The discussion back then seemed to indicate this might not be a good thing. Does the current design refute those earlier discussions?

Er. From what was written, nothing seemed to be fundamentally more "non-binary" than CoH was. Except, I suppose, that powers don't all lock out at once, but CoH did have that, just not in quite that way.

Which is not to say this isn't a good approach! Honestly, whether by accident or design or both, CoH got it mostly-right in a way that I have yet to see any other game do, so maybe this is just a difference between how I'd use those words and how you are -- I would normally only describe a much more "fundamental" change in that way, and I think that taking it as an evolution rather than a revolution is actually the right path here.

I worry about defensive powers, especially ones designed to resist Mez, being de-toggled by willpower-reduction... In CoH a lot of the status-resist powers of a Tanker/Scrapper required higher levels to become available. If one has to wait until higher level to get mez-resist and the willpower-cost is higher, as well, then one might easily suffer a 'cascade failure', resulting in disaster.

I'd have no doubt the various math savants would figure this system out to extreme min/max precision regardless. I definitely do NOT want to see this "control variable minutia" on my main GUIs but if MWM wants to bother to have all that data flow onto some kind of "hidden by default" logging stream that's fine by me.

Please, please take this approach in general. I know there are potential issues with data flow speeds, perhaps make it optional-to-send if that's a concern, but speaking as someone who is completely willing to write his on UI, even if it means logging to an external program and analyzing it there, don't make me double down on the math summoning. I'd just see it as an excuse to start learning the details of how to use the massive-data analytics engine we just picked up at the day job. :P

For the record, this goes for pretty much all math, including things like aggro; one of the most frustrating things I've ever run into, that caused a friend to just flat-out quit playing, was a broken aggro mechanic where the mobs broke off from combat to run toward the respawn point *that they couldn't see* and attack the healer who had died and respawned. Despite an active tank being present in the combat, as well as DPSers throwing enough to potentially strip the aggro off the tank. And despite seeing it 2-3 times, we could never convince anyone to take it seriously. Being able to present a log that *showed* the aggro not wiping off the healer would have at least prevented the person from feeling like they were being... well, today the term would probably be "gaslighted".

MWM probably can't reasonably keep logs of every calculation, it would take ridiculous amounts of storage and I/O capacity just to keep up, much less analyze it. But as a rule, players who see something often enough for it to be a problem are likely to be able to enable logging for long enough to get proof and send it as part of troubleshooting. No, everybody won't do it, but if it is a pervasive problem I can pretty much guarantee that at least two or three will. And speaking as a software developer, having access to a limited-scope recording of the system *as it misbehaves* is pretty much the second-best situation you can ask for. The best being "having an easily reproducible and observable failure", but once stuff gets past any decent QA you've normally caught 99% of those. So call it an investment in future sanity of both your support folks and your developers (as well as your players), and put it on the roadmap wherever that implies it belongs.

In this case it is about functional game mechanics and balanced game play. Not about the “reasoning” for why professor x’s Power stops wolverine from healing.

I am reserving any real judgement on this until it can be playtested, because as neat as it sounds, it could either *be* that neat, or turn out to be one of those neat ideas that ends up being terrible in practice. I sure as heck have no way of gauging it accurately just from the descriptions.

The mains points of caution that I hope MWM is accounting for needing to adjust for -- not just plan for, but actively adjust, because you *will* get it wrong at first -- are quite straightforward:

Messing around with what a player can do is frustrating but tolerable *to a limited degree*, and that caveat is the crux of where things tend to fall apart

Not being able to tell whether a power will work means the power might as well be disabled.

Worse, if it might do something bad and you can't even tell, I will not be surprised if folks come for you with torches and pitchforks. There is very, very little that angers people as much as the illusion of having control but not having it -- however, the illusion of having control while actively subverting it is one of the few things that does.

At least my personal experience says that overlap between the range of effects that feel effective in PvE and the range of effects that frustrate someone in PvP is nil. In fact, there's usually a significant gap in the middle where you piss off *both* camps. The only way around this is to have different mechanics, either by making them explicitly different or by skewing the NPC numbers incredibly compared to PCs.

Note that most of these points are generic to any system where players can experience mez. It doesn't mean those systems can't be made to work, it just means that there is a lot of psychology that you need to be accounting for beyond just "game balance" if you want to make people not just get frustrated enough to find something better to do with their time. And how much it matters tends to vary *a lot* between people, so if there isn't some way to deliberately beef up a character against mez -- the details here haven't been discussed that I've seen -- it will tend to be worse because there's no way to mitigate it to personal taste. Having it as a tradeoff is fine, as long as it is actually effective, but some folks will be screaming after a second and a half and others could care less after six seconds. It is a huge range.

You're entirely right about 'player not being able to tell if they're charmed' is... questionable. But in the few cases it happened in the old game, the total signal of it was 'targeting changes to ally' 'oops'
Same thing would have to happen here if you tried to attack that way. We'll see how it goes.

As far as 'raw data' - by the middle of things CoH had a statistics window, and we're just fine with something like that being visible on the character at the player's will. We're just saying there's no big flashing lights saying 'you're controlled' here. More subtle effects like 'why did my targeting just switch' will be more of what happens.

Question: will teammates normally be immune to each other's damage? If so, is this saying that being charmed disables that friendly fire immunity? But possibly only for certain powers at any given moment?

Keep in mind you will know when powers are affected by a Hold, Disorient, Sleep, and Fear.
Aversion doesn’t let you target the originator with affected powers.

Taunt and Charmed are not meant to not automatically be avoided. It is meant to be intuitively learned. If this becomes a behavior issue in play we can use the power bar as the UI to indicate affected powers with an overlay. It is not like we won’t adjust based on play testing. This is just the first pass plan.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

First, I worry that it’s building in “vulnerabilities”. That is, a character will have to avoid certain enemies because of power choices. For example, as I level up my superhero The Drowsy Dwarf if I avoid improving a particular control stat, I won’t be able to complete any missions against the villain Dr Narcolepdose and his Sleepmen minions. Is this a design goal?

I also wonder how the mob AI will handle non-binary controls. How often will it use or avoid using powers impacted by controls?

You never worry about improving the control stats as you can never see them. Inetead, you look to use protection powers: Defense to Controls by style (Melee, range, AoE) and / or Resiistwncento the Tupe of the Control (physical, energy, exotic).

If you have, say a character with low exotic resistance and an npc group uses exotic types controls; they will have greater effect on your character. It works the same way as handling sustain versus damage,

The basic AI uses powers as they are available. If a charmed npc has a charmed power become available, and there is a hostile target of the originator of the charm effect in range of the powers (or friendly target if it is a friendly power) the npc will use it. Same as with taunt:

Concentration controls simply won’t activate. Taunted powers will be used as they are avsilable.

If a character can skip particular defensive powers in order to have other powers, do we have in effect a “weakness” system? The discussion back then seemed to indicate this might not be a good thing. Does the current design refute those earlier discussions?

Players don’t choose weaknesses and strengths of their protections.

Sets may be weaker to certain damage types tover others. This does mean they will be weaker toward any effect of that type.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

You're entirely right about 'player not being able to tell if they're charmed' is... questionable. But in the few cases it happened in the old game, the total signal of it was 'targeting changes to ally' 'oops'
Same thing would have to happen here if you tried to attack that way. We'll see how it goes.

I don't know of any PC powers that simulate the Dominate effects from D&D, though I have seen NPCs that can do it in WoW. In those cases, the player no longer has any control over the character.

My personal opinion is that it might be better to have the fully charmed effect be that the character becomes an uncontrolled pet of the charmer, that attacks what the charmer sees as enemies, or heals what it sees as friends. Perhaps partially charmed PCs gradually become "held" and then become less held pets?

But not telling the player that the character is no longer under the player's control seems to me to be likely to result in a great deal of ill will.

Keep in mind you will know when powers are affected by a Hold, Disorient, Sleep, and Fear.
Aversion doesn’t let you target the originator with affected powers.

Taunt and Charmed are not meant to not automatically be avoided. It is meant to be intuitively learned. If this becomes a behavior issue in play we can use the power bar as the UI to indicate affected powers with an overlay. It is not like we won’t adjust based on play testing. This is just the first pass plan.

And it sounds amazing. Seems like you've built it in a way that you can easily customize all the behind-the-scenes data to shift the numbers as needed. I have 0 qualms with this update, it's all great. And what isn't great i'm sure will be playtested to death and 'fixed'. Great job!

You're entirely right about 'player not being able to tell if they're charmed' is... questionable. But in the few cases it happened in the old game, the total signal of it was 'targeting changes to ally' 'oops'
Same thing would have to happen here if you tried to attack that way. We'll see how it goes.

I don't know of any PC powers that simulate the Dominate effects from D&D, though I have seen NPCs that can do it in WoW. In those cases, the player no longer has any control over the character.

My personal opinion is that it might be better to have the fully charmed effect be that the character becomes an uncontrolled pet of the charmer, that attacks what the charmer sees as enemies, or heals what it sees as friends. Perhaps partially charmed PCs gradually become "held" and then become less held pets?

But not telling the player that the character is no longer under the player's control seems to me to be likely to result in a great deal of ill will.

Players will know when they are fully charmed and taunted. It is the partial effects that are not intended to be shown up front. You will have icon indicators to show when your character has an effect on them.

If they are, players will simply avoid the charmed or tainted power. Which is intended after finding out,

It is meant to be learned because it results in an unintended action. “Dang it ai emant to heal my Stalwart, not theirs!”
“Oh no, I attacked my Guerdian when I was attacking their Enforcer!”

I better not use those or any other higher tier powers until this wears off.

As said, this is a first pass plan. If it doesn’t work out well, we can provide UI overlay on the power icon to indicate otherwise.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

I really like this news :D As the controller class was my favorite, i will probably enjoy the Operator :)
But i wonder :
1. are inspirations existing in the game so as to lower or erase the control effect like it was in CoH ?
2. Can a contro power untoggle a power from an ennemy (in PVP or PVE) ? (as it makes a power unusable, i think it untoglle a power. do you confirm that ?)

A stray thought that does a good job of summarizing what I was trying to get at with PvP vs. PvE balance. Which, with me, means a wall of text, but you should all expect that by now. :)

When LARPing as an NPC, literally 85% of the time or more the instructions could be boiled down to "stay up and keep swinging until either A) they've thrown about this much in effects (i.e. burned that many resources), or B) it would be silly and immersion-breaking to not go down". And most of the remaining 15% were encounters that were either puzzles, shops, or some form of non-combat NPCs. Even then adjustment sometimes happened, but it was a lot more subtle and never on things that had 'hard rules' and long term impacts, like item prices).

The job of the NPC isn't to win, it is to give the PCs the right amount of challenge for the encounter. For top-tier encounters that might in fact mean that you're going "all out", but at that point we're talking about the equivalent of an EB or AV -- and unless I mis-recall, an EB was considered the canonical "roughly equal to the average player."

As "third orc from the left" it was more likely to be "spread the love around, punish them if they are dumb enough to leave their casters wide open and let you walk around them, if they're annoying you with arrows you can charge them but otherwise mostly wait for them to engage and don't chase far if they start seriously running. And when -- not if -- they dropsy you, remember to *drop* your weapon and stop using that hand for ten seconds." Mez isn't just for MMOs, and losing your weapon hand for ten seconds was generally a death sentence (as it was expected to be).

While some of this is just rambling, some of it is an example of "what it feels like to be on the receiving end of PvE". You *do* get nailed with effects strong enough that no PC would tolerate it, and your capabilities are scaled somewhat to the players -- the equivalent for an MMO would be a difficulty slider, since we were aiming to have the same "net difficulty" against different groups of players. And you played deliberately dumb in certain fairly specific ways that were genre-appropriate, because it was part of how you made yourself weaker than a PC who was playing out of the same rulebook as you.

Players could coup-de-gras an NPC to make sure they stayed down, but I can recall exactly *once* in all those years where the reverse was true, and it was in a game with a risk rating of 10 (the highest it went), where folks came in understanding that there was a non-trivial chance that they could do everything right and still die due to bad luck. You usually only focused on the casters as a way of forcing the front-line folks to guard them. Paralyze powers were used to give you a chance to ninja-vanish as a plot point, rather than as a tactical thing, and if a random mook had any sort of mez it was going to be a reactive sort ("you hit me and this goes off against you") and highly visible.

Not all of these things translate directly to an MMO, although some do -- the coup-de-gras thing becomes "enemy factions that can rez in any fashion have that as their schtick" combined with "death does not lock a player out of a fight" (oh $deity do I freaking hate that mechanic in MMOs... *never* make the player feel like they might as well go get a cup of coffee rather than play the game, they're *paying you to play the damn game*). Monsters focus on front-line defenders (a.k.a. tanks) even though rationally you always kill the radio man, then the medic, then the officer, and only *then* do you worry about anyone else.

All of this is stuff that I'm absolutely certain MWM is dealing with. And I'm quite certain that all of this will be playtested and tuned and so on. But this is one of the few things that I've seen games *consistently* fail to manage to balance, even after years of active play, because being an NPC (or a GM) is all about understanding how to cheat just enough, and in the right ways, that it is fun for the player, but you cannot do that in PvP.

"Fair is not the same as fun." In PvP "fair" is a fundamental prerequisite, but preserving fun usually involves balancing "skill should provide a meaningful advantage" against "skill should not make it so one-sided that it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle that is impossible to break into." In PvE... if you wanted to be playing fair, you'd be playing PvP.

Players will know when they are fully charmed and taunted. It is the partial effects that are not intended to be shown up front. You will have icon indicators to show when your character has an effect on them.

If they are, players will simply avoid the charmed or tainted power. Which is intended after finding out,

It is meant to be learned because it results in an unintended action. “Dang it ai emant to heal my Stalwart, not theirs!”
“Oh no, I attacked my Guerdian when I was attacking their Enforcer!”

I better not use those or any other higher tier powers until this wears off.

As I said initially... this could prove to be awesome, or terrible, and I honestly think the only real way to tell is to try it out and see what playtesting brings. My points were less about "these are going to be problems" and more "these seem like significant things to consider when trying to make adjustments or understand why players like/hate/whatever but they can't necessarily articulate it well."

Tannim222 wrote:

As said, this is a first pass plan. If it doesn’t work out well, we can provide UI overlay on the power icon to indicate otherwise.

And this is why I'm perfectly happy to wait and see how it plays out, even though that will be a little while yet. I do have full confidence that MWM is building a system with enough "flex" in it to address things, and what concerns I have are almost entirely due to "this problem has been proven to be remarkably difficult to find a good answer for, over the years." New and evolving answers are the only way to fix that, so I actually look forward to trying it out just to see "how it feels", even though I mostly didn't get around to playing them on CoH.

Even if it probably won't happen, I also look forward to being able to nail a mob's feet to the ground and then smack it around with a grav/force (high KB) power and watch it bounce around like one of those self-righting punching bags. Because that is really the one thing I've wanted and never seen from the Force set on CO (which for years was the bulk of my first/primary toon there). Just for the giggle factor, even if accomplishing it required unachievable-outside-of-debug stat levels.

If there are numbers involved, the min/maxers absolutely should have some way to see them. If you have to hide stats to make gameplay interesting, you did something wrong.

Overall, I think I'm going to have to wait to see it (hopefully in alpha or beta so we can provide feedback) before I'll know if I like this or not.

We aren’t “hiding stats”. Stats is he simplest way to convey what is going on behind the scenes. These are actually are parameters in a system .

There simply would be no intuitive way to convey what is aholening to all Powers with all possible control effects by showing a bunch of numbers or colored meters. At best it would be a convoluted mess that doesn’t effectively reparaent what is happening game play wise. At best, all you will know is “maybe some fraction of my powers are affected by these controls, some fraction by these other controls” and so on. Resulting in what amounts to a convoluted mess .

By showing you when your powers are affected by actually affecting them through through play is the best way to convey the information.

—

I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic - Tech Team.

This design decision makes sense to me. It will take some adapting on our part as players, but I think that's part of what will make this game feel fresh and exciting compared to most other MMOs out there. For the most part, and within reason, I'm a fan of CoT's doing things differently from other MMOs. That is, after all, a big part of what made the old game so enjoyable and why so many of us are waiting for this game to scratch an itch no other MMO can.

If there are numbers involved, the min/maxers absolutely should have some way to see them. If you have to hide stats to make gameplay interesting, you did something wrong.

Overall, I think I'm going to have to wait to see it (hopefully in alpha or beta so we can provide feedback) before I'll know if I like this or not.

We aren’t “hiding stats”. Stats is he simplest way to convey what is going on behind the scenes. These are actually are parameters in a system .

There simply would be no intuitive way to convey what is aholening to all Powers with all possible control effects by showing a bunch of numbers or colored meters. At best it would be a convoluted mess that doesn’t effectively reparaent what is happening game play wise. At best, all you will know is “maybe some fraction of my powers are affected by these controls, some fraction by these other controls” and so on. Resulting in what amounts to a convoluted mess .

By showing you when your powers are affected by actually affecting them through through play is the best way to convey the information.

My 2 cents, why not add the option to write all that happen in combat on a text/json/xml log file?

In Star Trek Online there is an option to activate a combat.log (that need to be activated each time one login and last to logout or until is manually disabled) that store all that happen in combat.

Will let everyone review that fight and see the influence of each control effect and all others behind the scene data details.

S.T.O.'s log is also a not locked file letting 3th parties utilities as CombatLogReader digest it and show stats of how the fight gone like damage by effect / resist / heal / etc...

I've very intrigued by, and cautiously optimistic of, the system described.

I do have a question as to how a mob/player functions in a situation where multiple characters/npcs are applying charm to the same entity.

EDIT: Answered my own question by going back and reading the article again. Carry On.

angelo.pampalone wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

warlocc wrote:

I dunno.

If there are numbers involved, the min/maxers absolutely should have some way to see them. If you have to hide stats to make gameplay interesting, you did something wrong.

Overall, I think I'm going to have to wait to see it (hopefully in alpha or beta so we can provide feedback) before I'll know if I like this or not.

We aren’t “hiding stats”. Stats is he simplest way to convey what is going on behind the scenes. These are actually are parameters in a system .

There simply would be no intuitive way to convey what is aholening to all Powers with all possible control effects by showing a bunch of numbers or colored meters. At best it would be a convoluted mess that doesn’t effectively reparaent what is happening game play wise. At best, all you will know is “maybe some fraction of my powers are affected by these controls, some fraction by these other controls” and so on. Resulting in what amounts to a convoluted mess .

By showing you when your powers are affected by actually affecting them through through play is the best way to convey the information.

My 2 cents, why not add the option to write all that happen in combat on a text/json/xml log file?

In Star Trek Online there is an option to activate a combat.log (that need to be activated each time one login and last to logout or until is manually disabled) that store all that happen in combat.

Will let everyone review that fight and see the influence of each control effect and all others behind the scene data details.

S.T.O.'s log is also a not locked file letting 3th parties utilities as CombatLogReader digest it and show stats of how the fight gone like damage by effect / resist / heal / etc...

Earlier in the thread Warcabbit said:

warcabbit wrote:

As far as 'raw data' - by the middle of things CoH had a statistics window, and we're just fine with something like that being visible on the character at the player's will. We're just saying there's no big flashing lights saying 'you're controlled' here. More subtle effects like 'why did my targeting just switch' will be more of what happens.

So I think that it's likely/possible that the numbers will be/can be made accessible for those who really want to know, even if they're otherwise not plainly listed.

I remember I tracked about 10 or 12 stats for my characters once CoH added in the little stat window (typically various Resists and Defenses pertinent to the individual character; plus End Recovery/sec, End Use/sec, etc). I'm all for a stand alone stat tracker window.

I get what Tannim is saying. Imagine your UI trying to track all those control effects from multiple different sources.

If it's one enemy using controls on you, fine that wouldn't be so messy. If it's a full group of enemy controllers? Especially if they have numerous types of control effects? There doesn't seem to be a way to cleanly indicate to a player what is affecting what, and by how much.

Also I really like that you can't tell if you're charmed. Might cause people to sit out a fight to not risk hitting their allies which would make it a damn good control effect.

One of the things I loved most in CoH was playing controllers, and having the ability to absolutely lock something down. The binary there was ameliorated by the fact that there were almost always enough mobs that a 'troller had to pick and choose their targets, and balance that lockdown against other threats. But I probably first fell in love with the game by playing a Stone Controller -- Seeing a Lt. or Boss encased in a huge rock was just so rewarding.

I'm concerned that Control will feel "mushy" with this design, to the extent that all holds will start to feel like "slows" or "weakens", without a true sense of "hold". I understand the rationale behind the changes, but as a completely non-pvp player, I don't personally care if binary holds are a frustrating thing for whoever is on the receiving end -- they're all just going to be little 1s and 0s anyway. It disappoints me when PVP concerns cause a PVE element that I really liked to be watered down.

Again, I get the rationale behind the choice. It's not going to be CoH 2, I know that. Withholding final judgement until I have a chance to see how it feels in action.

You're entirely right about 'player not being able to tell if they're charmed' is... questionable. But in the few cases it happened in the old game, the total signal of it was 'targeting changes to ally' 'oops'
Same thing would have to happen here if you tried to attack that way. We'll see how it goes.

I don't know of any PC powers that simulate the Dominate effects from D&D, though I have seen NPCs that can do it in WoW. In those cases, the player no longer has any control over the character.

My personal opinion is that it might be better to have the fully charmed effect be that the character becomes an uncontrolled pet of the charmer, that attacks what the charmer sees as enemies, or heals what it sees as friends. Perhaps partially charmed PCs gradually become "held" and then become less held pets?

But not telling the player that the character is no longer under the player's control seems to me to be likely to result in a great deal of ill will.

Players will know when they are fully charmed and taunted. It is the partial effects that are not intended to be shown up front. You will have icon indicators to show when your character has an effect on them.

If they are, players will simply avoid the charmed or tainted power. Which is intended after finding out,

It is meant to be learned because it results in an unintended action. “Dang it ai emant to heal my Stalwart, not theirs!”
“Oh no, I attacked my Guerdian when I was attacking their Enforcer!”

I better not use those or any other higher tier powers until this wears off.

As said, this is a first pass plan. If it doesn’t work out well, we can provide UI overlay on the power icon to indicate otherwise.

I love most of what I hear, but specifically about Charmed or Taunted, I feel that may be too hard to fully see in the heat of lots of combat, and it SOUNDS (admittedly without having all the information nor having ever tried it) super frustrating.

I would much prefer to just loose temp control, which maybe optional activatables to break it. I know that sounds weird saying "Id rather just not have any actions available than partial actions available" but the partial and uncertain control just sounds frustrating and unfun.

As you said, this is a first pass and you have plenty of options to tweak design, but I dont want to hit a button and have that button do something different. Maybe its conditioning, maybe its an incorrect way of thinking, but its still there as a visceral dislike.

EDIT: Personally Id like to see charm as a stun with a different defense set for PCs in pve and pvp, maybe with a small damage transfer as your character "protects" the other person, leaving the responsibility on your teamates to avoid damaging that mob/you, with full visual cues available. Otherwise, again to repeat, it just feels very unfun to not know when I might accidentilly attack an ally.

Oooohh sweet mother of , these mechanics are beautiful. I don't think you can make a more non-binary implementation than this.
This also explains why we won't be augmenting the duration of control effects (pretty sure it was said in the augment system comments thread) but rather the power of them since it would most likely take too long to stack them high enough to be useful in the long run. Shorter but more powerful makes you reach their max potential faster.

Couple of points:
Are toggles actual de-toggled or just suppressed when you lose access to said power due to control effects? (Hopefully just suppressed)
Are passives affected at all by control effects? (Shouldn't be imo)
Do control powers stack with themselves, as in can a power that I can cast every 3 secs (CD + animation) with a 12 sec effective duration give me 4 "stacks" by itself?

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Shadow Elusive wrote:

This is one area we are really breaking new ground. Nobody, to the best of our knowledge, has done this before in games.

Er. From what was written, nothing seemed to be fundamentally more "non-binary" than CoH was. Except, I suppose, that powers don't all lock out at once, but CoH did have that, just not in quite that way.

Which is not to say this isn't a good approach! Honestly, whether by accident or design or both, CoH got it mostly-right in a way that I have yet to see any other game do, so maybe this is just a difference between how I'd use those words and how you are -- I would normally only describe a much more "fundamental" change in that way, and I think that taking it as an evolution rather than a revolution is actually the right path here.

Not sure how you define "non-binary" but to me the gradual loss of control of ones character and gradual loss of access to powers is fundamentally more non-binary than the all-or-nothing approach CoH had. Yes some retained access to some powers but that was not because it was part of the control mechanics themselves but rather an inherent part of that AT.

If CoT is the new 100% non-binary standard and traditional MMO's are the 0% non-binary standard then I would peg CoH at about 10-20% non-binary. Purely from a mechanics point of view the difference between CoH and traditional MMO's is that in CoH you sometimes needed to stack a control before it took effect (a.k.a actually did something to the target) but otherwise it worked the same as traditional MMO's.

Under the descriptions in the What Controls Are There? section is says:

Quote:

Hold: slows movement and impedes power function, potentially preventing all power use

and

Quote:

Disorient: affects directional movement and impedes power function, potentially preventing all power use

What's the difference between "Slows Movement" under Hold, and "Affects directional movement" under Disorient?

I take it as that hold will slow your movement down while disorient will change in what direction you move, as in press left and you might go right instead. Not sure about disorient but I take it that hold will slow all actions of a character (like power recharge) and not just travel-type movement.

Are enemies with charm effects expected to spawn in the overworld? Because if so, you just created a perfect griefer opportunity. Get partially charmed, run at a group of players, hit the nuke. And people will do this. If there's any way to inflict PvP in the PvE phase, it will be done.

I honestly second the idea that charm shouldn't let you, the player, attack other player characters, instead have the AI take over and control your character. Still frustrating, of course, but the AI is not actively malicious. Some players can be. For the nonbinary part, give affected powers a big miss rate as you're struggling to keep control of your own actions.

Are enemies with charm effects expected to spawn in the overworld? Because if so, you just created a perfect griefer opportunity. Get partially charmed, run at a group of players, hit the nuke. And people will do this. If there's any way to inflict PvP in the PvE phase, it will be done.

I honestly second the idea that charm shouldn't let you, the player, attack other player characters, instead have the AI take over and control your character. Still frustrating, of course, but the AI is not actively malicious. Some players can be. For the nonbinary part, give affected powers a big miss rate as you're struggling to keep control of your own actions.

And this is probably why there's no indication of which powers are affected.

You don't know which powers are hit by a charm effect.

Also you'll have to go find some enemies that will charm you, then run and find a group of players, hit a power you have no idea if it'll even do anything to other players, all within the span of that charm effect that could have a duration of a handful of seconds.

I'm going to chalk this up as exceedingly unlikely to transpire.

Likely most people are going to congregate in low level areas (like they did with Atlas Park)where there probably won't be any charm effects. So they'll have to go to another zone, get charmed, come -back- to another zone, then mash their power that might not even be affected... Within the control's duration.

Are enemies with charm effects expected to spawn in the overworld? Because if so, you just created a perfect griefer opportunity. Get partially charmed, run at a group of players, hit the nuke. And people will do this. If there's any way to inflict PvP in the PvE phase, it will be done.

I honestly second the idea that charm shouldn't let you, the player, attack other player characters, instead have the AI take over and control your character. Still frustrating, of course, but the AI is not actively malicious. Some players can be. For the nonbinary part, give affected powers a big miss rate as you're struggling to keep control of your own actions.

And this is probably why there's no indication of which powers are affected.

You don't know which powers are hit by a charm effect.

Also you'll have to go find some enemies that will charm you, then run and find a group of players, hit a power you have no idea if it'll even do anything to other players, all within the span of that charm effect that could have a duration of a handful of seconds.

I'm going to chalk this up as exceedingly unlikely to transpire.

Likely most people are going to congregate in low level areas (like they did with Atlas Park)where there probably won't be any charm effects. So they'll have to go to another zone, get charmed, come -back- to another zone, then mash their power that might not even be affected... Within the control's duration.

Two players each bring a character with a Charm power. They let an enemy with a Charm power fully Charm them. They proceed to use their Charm power on each other. Now you have a portable Charm that can be used on anyone. Either use you own attack or have a Ranger be Charmed so he can nuke a common area.

There, it's portable, and repeatable. If you allow player powers to be used on players and give players powers that can inflict this status, you can nuke any player, anywhere as long as you can get an enemy to hit that first Charm to start it off. Bonus point if status effects aren't cleared when transitioning from a PvP area to a PvE one. Then it's dead simple.

People will go great lengths to be jerks in MMOs. You give the ability to attack other players in PvE areas, people will use it for that, even if it's meant to be a bad status.

In CoH, no enemies out in the wild ever used a Confuse power. This is why.

What's the difference between "Slows Movement" under Hold, and "Affects directional movement" under Disorient?

My interpretation would be:Hold slowing movement >> The magnitude (or speed) of your movement would be restricted. You would still have full control over how and where you move. Liken this to trying to move under 4 Gs instead of just normal gravity.

Disorient affecting direction >> The player's choice of direction while moving would be augmented. Maybe you have control 50% of the time and the other 50% is random. Liken this to getting drunk in World of Warcraft. When you are a little drunk you just swerve a little. When you are really drunk you kinda move in the direction you want but end up veering way off to a side then spin a bit if you keep moving a lot.

As long as a power’s Willpower requirement is below your current control stat value, the power is unaffected. But if attacks reduce your control stat below a power’s Willpower requirement, that power will suffer the control effects of the attack. Thus your highest tier powers will generally be affected by controls before your lower tier powers. This top down cascading effect means that you will rarely be without some recourse as controls start to have their effects, making true helplessness unlikely.

As mentioned earlier, as you incur stacking control effects, your powers will change (grayed out, usable on friends, etc). If you have resistances to certain effects, you can assume you can sustain more before you start to lose control.

My question is how can you judge whether you are close to losing control?
The update and comments here so far say that you have to react to the loss of control (high tier powers, if you have them) or risk further loss of control (mid tier powers).

How can another player help/assist a player that is at risk of losing control if the first sign of losing control is actually losing control?

What happens if a character is built around low tier powers (or no high tier)? Are they just magically more resilient against control powers because they use lower tiered abilities?

We will be given the option to tweak/augment our powers, so will this control scheme give more weight to beefing up the low tier powers?

Are enemies with charm effects expected to spawn in the overworld? Because if so, you just created a perfect griefer opportunity. Get partially charmed, run at a group of players, hit the nuke. And people will do this. If there's any way to inflict PvP in the PvE phase, it will be done.

I honestly second the idea that charm shouldn't let you, the player, attack other player characters, instead have the AI take over and control your character. Still frustrating, of course, but the AI is not actively malicious. Some players can be. For the nonbinary part, give affected powers a big miss rate as you're struggling to keep control of your own actions.

And this is probably why there's no indication of which powers are affected.

You don't know which powers are hit by a charm effect.

Also you'll have to go find some enemies that will charm you, then run and find a group of players, hit a power you have no idea if it'll even do anything to other players, all within the span of that charm effect that could have a duration of a handful of seconds.

I'm going to chalk this up as exceedingly unlikely to transpire.

Likely most people are going to congregate in low level areas (like they did with Atlas Park)where there probably won't be any charm effects. So they'll have to go to another zone, get charmed, come -back- to another zone, then mash their power that might not even be affected... Within the control's duration.

Two players each bring a character with a Charm power. They let an enemy with a Charm power fully Charm them. They proceed to use their Charm power on each other. Now you have a portable Charm that can be used on anyone. Either use you own attack or have a Ranger be Charmed so he can nuke a common area.

There, it's portable, and repeatable. If you allow player powers to be used on players and give players powers that can inflict this status, you can nuke any player, anywhere as long as you can get an enemy to hit that first Charm to start it off. Bonus point if status effects aren't cleared when transitioning from a PvP area to a PvE one. Then it's dead simple.

People will go great lengths to be jerks in MMOs. You give the ability to attack other players in PvE areas, people will use it for that, even if it's meant to be a bad status.

In CoH, no enemies out in the wild ever used a Confuse power. This is why.

So two controllers then... So they'll be able to what? Mass mez a group of people?

So you'd need a third person.

Also.

Charm: affected powers can only target those hostile to the charmer.

So player A and B go find enemy C, let enemy C charm player A, player A charms Player B (who, if I'm right can target only enemy C, as he is hostile to player A), then they'd have to bring enemy C around other players before their charms wear off, to maybe use their control effects on other players... Depending on faction rep.

I like this. Neverwinter Online has a class called the “Control Wizard” that presumably is focused on controlling enemies. But since that’s a binary situation in that game, as it is in most MMOs, controlling enemies risks making content trivial. So they’ve watered it down so that you “control” enemies for a few seconds at a time with pretty large cooldowns. Basically the “control” aspect is barely given a token representation and the class is just about ranged DPS.

I look forward to a game where a controller can actually control enemies!

No surprise because it's from the same company, but CO has similar issues. Three seconds is considered a long duration for control effects, in a game where fights last several minutes, anything above minions is effectively immune to control effects, damage applied to the controlled target further reduces duration, all targets receive immunity to subsequent applications of the same control effect after the first, and all control powers have cooldowns of 5 to 90 seconds. Controls are effectively worthless in that game, and as a result my attempts to translate some of my CoX controllers resulted in DPS nukers.

I'm not sure how I feel about the announcement, but it's not necessarily negative and it sounds like it will be interesting to test it out.

If there are numbers involved, the min/maxers absolutely should have some way to see them. If you have to hide stats to make gameplay interesting, you did something wrong.

Overall, I think I'm going to have to wait to see it (hopefully in alpha or beta so we can provide feedback) before I'll know if I like this or not.

But the opposite is also true - if you clutter up your GUIs with too much info you've also done something terribly wrong. I don't want my MMO GUIs to look like an Excel spreadsheet.

I think there should be a way for people interested in the "maths" to get ACCESS to this data (via some kind of logging mechanism) but I seriously don't think anyone would ever want to see all these control-oriented numbers on their GUI in real time.

Think of how absolutely cluttered with info your screen would get. As an example most MMOs let you see a single "HP bar" hovering above each MOB running around on screen. Now imagine setting it up so that you see a bar for each of the CoT control-oriented variables related to each MOB. You'd suddenly have like 5 or 6 bars floating above each MOB. That would be such a cluster-overload of data as to be become pointless/useless.

The "Control Stats" (including the willpower stat every power will have) look like they are going to be discrete values (just like a character's hit points) and various control effects will reduce those values by discrete amounts. Basically this means that Control effects in CoT will not be measured in "plateaus" as you suggest but literally on scales from 0 to whatever your Control Stats maxs are (again just like HPs).

There were a few enemies in CoH that used confuse effects, some certain high-end bosses. The issue was that they were basically useless. Whenever I was confused, I just stopped operating for a bit, took the time to reposition, etc, until the enemy indicators fixed themselves. However, the idea that Charm will only affect certain powers, but you don't know which ones, is genius: that encourages you to experiment and possibly risk some consequences. It also makes it harder to notice it's happening, since you don't have your targeting indicator changing colors: you need to watch for the control indicator. Similarly with taunt: it's too easy to ignore bruiser NPCs in a lot of MMOs.

As for Charm trolling, I think Project_Hero is likely right: if Charm is based on the target's original enemies, there shouldn't be too much trouble. In theory heroes not involved with the fight would be neutral, and they would need to get involved somehow to have charm trolling start to effect them. So that would depend on how that enemy turns hostile to players. In addition, from what we've seen so far most of the control effects also do damage. This would mean that entire shebang has a limited timespan before someone keels over. Not to mention possible blocks in cooldown times, endurance costs, and player vs enemy control resistance. It would take a lot of factors coming together to make this happen.

There were a few enemies in CoH that used confuse effects, some certain high-end bosses. The issue was that they were basically useless. Whenever I was confused, I just stopped operating for a bit, took the time to reposition, etc, until the enemy indicators fixed themselves. However, the idea that Charm will only affect certain powers, but you don't know which ones, is genius: that encourages you to experiment and possibly risk some consequences. It also makes it harder to notice it's happening, since you don't have your targeting indicator changing colors: you need to watch for the control indicator. Similarly with taunt: it's too easy to ignore bruiser NPCs in a lot of MMOs.

As for Charm trolling, I think Project_Hero is likely right: if Charm is based on the target's original enemies, there shouldn't be too much trouble. In theory heroes not involved with the fight would be neutral, and they would need to get involved somehow to have charm trolling start to effect them. So that would depend on how that enemy turns hostile to players. In addition, from what we've seen so far most of the control effects also do damage. This would mean that entire shebang has a limited timespan before someone keels over. Not to mention possible blocks in cooldown times, endurance costs, and player vs enemy control resistance. It would take a lot of factors coming together to make this happen.

Remember how knockback--an indirect "friendly fire" situation where people could accidentally mess up their teammates' tactics--got people so ragey that some wouldn't invite or would kick out high-knockback builds, and it became an ongoing heated debate in CoH? It was a bad enough gameplay situation that MWM decided to fix the whole issue for CoT (though it never bothered me personally even though I mostly played tanks).

Well, Charmed will create situations of actual direct friendly fire. I'm pretty sure a significant number of people will absolutely spaz out if a teammate gets charmed and intentionally or through inattention happily blasts away at their back. This will lead to kick-offs, threads with special, imaginatively derisive names for people who do this, and lots of ill will.

People will get charmed and notice they can attack a teammate that they don't particularly like, and the "huh, huh, sorry," "huh, huh, oops, sorry again, dude," will begin. Or worse, little kids playing just won't get it and will become the subject of the of the anger of the whole team.

So, I'm not saying this is a bad mechanic or that it shouldn't be in the game, just that maybe NPC's shouldn't normally have it. Not because it would bother me personally--it wouldn't, I think it'd be fun--but because of the general teaming rancor it will occasionally but not infrequently cause.

Now, I could see it being used as a known special mechanic for a certain boss fight where the team prepares tactics to deal with it, but maybe not as a commonly occurring NPC power. I just think a significant number of people will get crazy ragey over it.